Where do we start (School)?

My daughter, Bee, is 3 1/2 and as of a few months ago we have decided to start a homeschool environment for her through her preschool years starting this fall. So far, I have been motivated towards the Montessori teaching methods. I also have a newly finished room in the basement that will accommodate this school room for the time being.

During the spring I had the opportunity to do a "Mommy and Me Montessori" experience. This really brought the idea of education onto my "to do" list. From this I was able to watch the interaction with the teachers, explore the room, and learn more about Montessori and their way of learning. I very much enjoyed the child directed work and the individual pace of learning allowed to each child. My husband and I felt that maybe we would be best served by sending our daughter to the school, and for a few months, we felt we had crossed this "to do" item of our list.

During the summer, our daughter had her first three hour camp with the same school. This was the first time she was away from us for any length of time. For more on this you can see my other post on breaking away. While the Montessori teaching method was much more to our liking, I think we let our guard down in a couple of areas. First, the nutrition guidelines we follow are not mainstream (yet) and we did not like the idea that she would be different from the others. Second, while the small class sizes initially attracted us to the school - the classroom would still have 25 children in it (there are just more teachers in the same room). So, discovering these concerns, we decided to table the discussion. Preschool is voluntary after all.

I did a little research in the local area as to homeschooling co-ops to see if any one had a montessori based curriculum - but I was out of luck. Again, the topic was tabled. At this time it was my thinking that I could not do it alone so I would need a coop to help and to socialize.

Over the summer a friend, who lives overseas, and I began talking about the subject of education and what the next steps will be for our children. She is under more pressure where she is as most children enter school at two (the country culture prizes rigorous academic standards from the beginning.)

She and I came to the conclusion that we could give our children a good primer just by teaching the basics at a level they could understand and mostly through play. She led me to a great blog post on toddler activity trays from the Sun Scholars blog. It was here that the can of worms was opened. And, from here, this turned into a more full recognition of path I was on.

At this point there is not a day that goes by that I do not feel excited at the prospect of getting to teach my daughter and watch her grow and develop in an academic sense. There is also not a day that goes by that I am not feeling frightened about the prospect of teaching her something wrong, or not knowing the answer to a question, or the idea "what if I am not a good teacher."

From the assumption that we would send our daughter to a school (and probably starting at the preschool age) at the beginning of the year to assembling the bones of a school room we have come a long way and we have a long way to go!